Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
Interpretation
Chekhov's works offer endless insights into the details of storytelling and character.
Tom Stoppard highlights the richness of Anton Chekhov's plays, suggesting that both directors and actors find immense value in exploring the intricate narratives embedded within his texts. This depth of storytelling allows for continuous discovery and interpretation, making Chekhov's works a rewarding experience for those involved in their performance.
In practice
In a theater workshop discussing the nuances of character development.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is.
I work with few colors, what creates the illusion of quantity is that they fell in the right place.
When I work on sculpture, I don't have to worry about function. When I work on a piece of architecture, I must think about function all the time.
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
Let proportion be found not only in numbers and measures, but also in sounds, weights, times, and positions, and what ever force there is.
Music washes away the dust of every day life.
Poetry is the essence of everything, and it’s through deep contact with reality and living fully that you reach poetry. Very often I see photographers cultivating the strangeness or awkwardness of a scene, thinking it is poetry. No. Poetry is two elements which are suddenly conflict — a spark between two elements. But it’s given very seldom, and you can’t look for it. It’s like if you look for inspiration. No, it just comes by enriching yourself and living.
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